During this slow time of the year for football (I am desperately working on a Lovie Smith article myself while it’s “slow”-stay tuned), www.ProfootBallTalk.com is ranking all the teams in the NFL. Today, they ranked the Bears in the bottom half of the league-not a playoff team-at number 18. Talk about no respect; the St. Louis Rams just placed ahead of them.

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Chicago - July 22, 2013 - During this slow time of the year for football (I am desperately working on a Lovie Smith article myself while it’s “slow”-stay tuned), www.ProfootBallTalk.com is ranking all the teams in the NFL. Today, they ranked the Bears in the bottom half of the league-not a playoff team-at number 18. Talk about no respect; the St. Louis Rams just placed ahead of them.

To summarize, they give a lot of credit to the Bear defense to have another strong year, thinking that either DJ Williams or Jon Bostic will be an improvement over last year’s Brian Urlacher. They pick on the Bears’ lack of a #2 receiver opposite Brandon Marshall, and also rip the Bears’ starting tight end in Martellus Bennett and on their offensive line.

I question the opinions on Bennett and the offensive line-certainly Bennett is a huge improvement over Kellen Davis, and Chicago has added three major pieces on the offensive line in Matt Slauson, Jermon Bushrod and Kyle Long. Certainly the offense is still questionable, but I don’t think it’s questionable that it’s MUCH better than in 2012.

They say their biggest questions are “will Jay Cutler fit Marc Trestman’s offense” (I say anything is better than Mike Tice‘s offense, and “will the offensive line protect Cutler” (well, it’s a hell of a lot better than the previous version.) These are the reasons why they have the Bears at #18, and both of these questions are solid improvements over last year’s team.

I’m not big on predictions, but I predict the Bears will make this website’s guess look silly in 2013.

Love the website. Don’t like this opinion.